It's a pretty rare occasion, honestly. I've heard of it happening, especially with other couples. I've heard the anticipation, the joy, the luxury, the opulence.

I speak, OBVIOUSLY, of The Elusive Date Night.

When I say "it's a rare occasion", I may be slightly exaggerating. I've talked to some couples with kids the same ages as ours, and they claim to have not been out since the baby was born. And, seriously, I offer them my condolences.

But I also have friends - lots of them, actually - who manage to have Date Nights almost WEEKLY. If not SEVERAL TIMES A WEEK. Isn't that the most amazing thing you've ever heard? How does that HAPPEN?

(Are you one of those people? HOW DO YOU MAKE THAT HAPPEN?)

Anyway, we average one date night every six weeks or so. And because it happens so infrequently, we tend to fall into this routine: Sushi, movie, home by 11:00. Maybe 10:30. We'll sometimes swap out "movie" for "play" as we are theatre folks, but that's the routine. Always sushi, always home by 11:00. We have to pay the babysitter, after all.

This column is about slowing down to enjoy the weekends, I know. And I've tried to supply family-friendly ways to do that. But you know what? Sometimes, I need to be an adult. Who does adult things and drinks adult drinks and enjoys dinner while it's STILL WARM. I need to have a couple of hours without someone pawing at me, without hearing "MOMMA LOOK" eleventy frillion times, without having to dig out a spare band-aid/game/boogie wipe from my purse. I need that.

(If I sound a little testy, it's because we're coming up on the six week mark.)

Aside from it being a great mental break, it's also - admittedly - nice to remember why I married the crazy man in my bed. (No, not that one. The OTHER one. The one with the wedding ring.) Granted, it's a struggle to find things to talk about outside of the kids - and I put no stock in that being an indication of a bad marriage, because if you have lunch with a coworker outside of work, what are Y'ALL gonna talk about? Work, right? It may eventually lead to a personal or general discussion, but chances are, you're focused on your common ground.

But what I'm saying here, rambling as it were, is that it's nice to sip a little sake and pretend that we don't have to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning to clean pee out of someone's bed linens.